Letter to the editor: Too many behave like climate ostriches

Some people will never accept that our actions are radically altering the climate, as is shown by Dave Rehbein's June 30 letter, "We Are Behaving Like Chicken Little." He cites predictions of global cooling in the 1970s to suggest that if scientists were wrong then, they are probably wrong now.

This argument only makes sense if most experts agreed at the time that the planet was cooling. Unfortunately for Rehbein and other climate-change deniers, such a consensus never existed. According to the "Skeptical Science" website, an analysis of climate studies published between 1965 and 1979 showed that only 10 percent predicted global cooling, while 62 percent foresaw warming caused by greenhouse-gas emissions.

Despite the spate of media attention given to the idea of a new ice age, by 1980 forecasts of a deep-freeze had ceased. Today over 97 percent of climate scientists and every major scientific organization in the world accept that man-made climate change is happening. That's what I call a consensus.

History shows that societies that ignore the ecological consequences of their actions sow the seeds of their collapse. The more appropriate metaphor here is that of the ostrich with its head in the sand.

- Shawn Voshell, Des Moines

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Letter to the editor: Too many behave like climate ostriches

Some people will never accept that our actions are radically altering the climate, as is shown by Dave Rehbein's June 30 letter, '